Pages

Contact Us

We're always open to suggestions, and would love to hear from you! If you have any ideas, or would like to become a part of the Eating Milwaukee staff, pleasee-mail us! If you're the type to not like clicking on random links, our e-mail address is:

staff@eatingmilwaukee.com

Simple, eh?

About Us

Eating Milwaukee is a food blog devoted to the best of Milwaukee's restaurants, specializing in off-the-beaten-path and ethnic foods. We're a group of food enthusiasts who love sampling new and interesting cuisines, and finding those hidden gems that our city is filled with. We eat without prejudice, and pledge to report honestly and with integrity.

About Our Methods

At Eating Milwaukee, we try our best to adhere to the ad-hoc Food Blog Code of Ethics, which is itself a version of the very official and very serious (no laughing!) Association of Food Journalists Food Critics' Guidlines. We're very proud of our strong reputation as a fair and honest restaurant-based food blog.

We review restaurants based on a few basic ground rules:

1) No chains.

We will not review chains. We eat at chains, we even like some chains, but we won't review them. Multiple locations of the same small business don't count.

2) Smaller is better.

We like dives. We like clean dives even more.

3) Culture rules.

There is no cuisine that is off-limits with us. We're foodies, we like it all. With a few small exceptions, we'll try almost anything twice.

4) Don't take our word for it.

Get out there and support local Milwaukee businesses!

5) We may inform the folks at the restaurant about the blog -- but, if we can, after we eat. We don't like the idea of anyone knowing about the review before we get our food... in case of, you know... tampering. Although it's pretty hard to keep a low profile when you have a huge camera on the table, and your flash keeps going off taking pictures of the chicken soup...

Followers

Search This Blog

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Before anyone starts to cry foul (or, more appropriately for our blog, maybe fowl?), this is not so much of a review as it is an honest effort to keep you, our dear readers, up-to-date on our more interesting dining experiences.

Andy and I are complete and utter sushi nuts. We love the good stuff. We love the baroque stuff. We love the semi-good stuff from the cooler case at Sendiks. We even like my sad-excuse for homemade sushi that I force on my relatives every year at Christmas... but that's another show.

About the only thing we don't like about sushi is how quickly our bills begin to rack up at the finer institutions around town. Which is why, when I first went to Kyoto (the sushi bar, not the city in Japan) about two years ago, it was an absolute revelation: all-you-can-eat sushi on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights, and the quality... was really pretty good!

But, ripe fruit soon spoils, right? Well, sometimes. But in the case of Kyoto, I'm happy to report, after a number of Eating Milwaukee outings over the past couple of months, we have nothing but raves about the place.

Sure, more authentic sushi can be found elsewhere. Sure, some of the combinations are kinda weird (teriyaki chicken maki, er, what?). Sure, the service can be kind of slow sometimes, and my inkling is that it keeps the lightweights from ordering so much sushi. But, for those of us die-hards who have been conditioning for such a dare, Kyoto still delivers the one-two punch of quantity and quality that beats my monthly sushi craving into submission.

Let's go to the highlight reel, shall we?

Some variety of maki topped with mango sauce. The sweet/tart mango plays a nice jazz-chord with the salty crunch of the tempura, so I'll let this one go with a, "Eh. I liked it."

The "Sunshine Roll." I'm going to write the exact description from Kyoto's take-out menu, so pardon the tense-shifts, missing pronouns and adverbs, and bizarre syntax. I think it's kind of charming.

The salmon inside was cooked. I guess I wasn't jumping out of my boxers for grilled salmon maki, but it was fun. In a grilled-salmon kind of way.

Shrimp tempura roll. Enough said:

Spicy tuna roll. This is one where I actually was sort of underwhelmed, only because the texture of the tuna vaguely resembles that of strawberry preserves. I think the chefs' chop is so fine that when they mix it with the chili sauce, the tuna loses any sense of integrity it once had, and simply becomes spicy mush. Next!

And this is the part of the show where it becomes obvious that Kyoto is not aiming for authenticity: the eel nigiri isn't so much broiled as it is deep fried. Whatever. The end bits of the eel are crispy, the filet as a whole is perfectly done, and it's piping hot when it comes to your plate. Traditional? Absolutely not. Authentic? Ehhh, questionable. Delicious? Hold on to your hat, because this is a fantastic twist on the classic...

Miso soup! We've missed you! No, we actually haven't, but you came with dinner, and like a friend-of-a -friend you're not fond of but tolerate to keep from offending, we ate the soup, anyway.

Oh, my deep-fried oyster maki. Still my favorite, after all these years. There's something so holy about a crunchy, soft, creamy oyster in vinegared rice, with avocado and sweet eel sauce.

The legendary snow white roll. So good, we ordered a minimum of two of them. On two different occasions. Here's the menu text:

I have to admit, this picture, now that I'm looking at it in my browser window, gives the seaweed a decidedly more yellow tint that it actually was: a bright, vibrant emerald green. The flavor echoed that brightness: crisp, fresh, a little spicy from red pepper flake, and nutty from sesame oil. You can order as many seaweed salads with your meal as you want (remember, it's AYCE!), so give it a try! And you don't even have to put up with snotty waiters who don't like alternative-lifestyle bohemians!

My arch-nemesis, the Spider Roll! Will I ever get past the idea of eating an entire crab, soft-shell and all, and just learn to enjoy the damn sushi already? Tune in next week, same fat time, same fat channel!

It is interesting to note that Kyoto has remodeled since our visit in 2009, resulting in a much, much more chic and open feel. The lighting fixtures scream Downtown, but the acoustic tile ceiling still sheepishly mutters, "strip mall in Greenfield, ho hum." No worries. The sushi was still a massive value, and for the amazing total of $55 for two people (and that also included two sodas), we consumed about $125 (market) worth of sushi. Which will always tip the scales in these days of fighting my cat for his own food and stealing ketchup packets from McDonalds to make spaghetti because I can't afford Chef Boyardee.